Quote of the Day
In theory, if criminals leave registered guns at a crime scene, the serial numbers can be used to trace the weapons back to the perpetrators.
But, in real life, guns are only left at the scene of a crime when gunmen have been seriously injured or killed. With both the criminal and the weapon present at a scene, police can solve these crimes without registration. In the exceedingly unusual instances where registered guns are left at the scene, they aren’t registered to the person who committed the crime.
Police in Hawaii, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York have had registration systems in place for decades but can’t point to any crimes that this has helped them to solve. Even entire countries such as Canada haven’t had success.
New York and Maryland spent tens of millions of dollars compiling a computer database that contained the unique ballistic “fingerprints” of each new gun sold over a 15-year period. Even these states, which strongly favor gun control, eventually abolished their systems because they never solved a single crime.
Despite Biden’s claims, his new ghost gun regulations are no more useful. Combined with Biden’s zero-tolerance policy for any paperwork mistakes by gun dealers, which has put thousands of licensed dealers out of business, this new rule is quite nefarious. Biden wants to put gun dealers out of business if they make any paperwork mistake, no matter how trivial or inconsequential. With each part of a gun having a different serial number, just transferring a barrel from one gun to another requires redoing all the paperwork on both guns. Biden is adding significant costs to gun dealers and manufacturers and increasing the likelihood of mistakes that would put them out of business.
There is a possible argument for using serial numbers for tax purposes, to allow for easier proof of whether a gun has been taxed. The 1934 National Firearms Act imposed taxes on certain weapons, such as machine guns. But licensed dealers can still make sure that guns are properly taxed when sold, just as sales taxes are imposed on items at any other store.
The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday isn’t the final word. But the real question is this: Why do Democrats keep pushing a policy that costs so much and has no crime-reducing benefits? Someday, knowing who owns guns will help them to target their confiscation efforts. Mass registration will set the stage for future gun bans.
John R. Lott Jr.
October 21, 2023
SCOTUS Rules on ‘Ghost Gun’ Regulation
It is not about public safety. It is about control. Total dictatorial, genocide enabled, control.
Good points in there, but I’m confused about the bit about transferring a barrel from one gun to another requiring paperwork because of serial numbers. Why? Is he talking about some particularly backward state like CA? The way I understand the rules is that receivers have serial numbers and are tracked, since they are “the firearm”. But barrels are just parts, like springs and screws and magazines, don’t require a serial number, and aren’t tracked.
My impression, from reading the Lott article, is that the Biden administration is trying to create a rule that all major gun parts will require serial numbers. This is to thwart 3D printed receivers.
If so, it’s a “closing the barn door after the horse has left” sort of thing, because there are already hundreds of millions of unserialized guns, each with dozens of unserialized parts, and most with an unserialized barrel, bolt, and firing pin.
Yeah, not going to work, not going to get done, purely legal-owner harassment.
I think the goal is to have every necessary part be serialized. Shotguns didn’t used to be serialized, but now they are. Someday I expect every barrel will need to be serialized in order to transfer the gun, and instead of each part going on a transfer form, a separate form will be required for each category. For analytical purposes. And additional fees.
Sure, I’ll serialize my 3d printed and CNC made receivers.
s/n NUNYABUSINESS01
s/n DEEZNUTS01
s/n YOMOMMASOFAT01
s/n MAKINGGOODCOMMUNISTS01
s/n NOTFORTRANSFER01
s/n TREEOFLIBERTY01
s/n GETAWARRANT01
s/n DONOTCONSENT01
s/n UNDERPROTEST01
s/n MYACTUALFULLNAME[8-digit birthdate][AA-ZZ]
s/N OR 1=1;DROP TABLES;–
I like that last one. Along the same lines: “rm -rf /” 🙂
So Lott is saying that government control is not working.
Is that not a part of a trend in technology? On balance, I think that technology has greatly improved the freedom of the individual and will continue to do so. At the same time, it has reduced the ability of governments to control both information and capabilities as exemplified by 3D printing.
Overall the internet and technology have and are empowering individuals while destroying belief systems used by authorities to control individuals.
Civilization is becoming a libertarian world.
Well…..suppose one were to, somehow, obtain the serial numbers of guns purchased by the Podunk / Chicago / New York / etc. Police Department, or the FBI, and issued to its officers and serialize 3-D printed guns with those numbers?
Hand them out in “those neighborhoods” country-wide and see what happens.
It, theoritically, should be possible to determine that the Glock 19 used to kill Dindu, Farquar or Heather was not the factory-made G19 purchased by That Government Agency From Glock, but:
1) 3-D printing is getting better so in a few years I wouldn’t rule out a sufficiently identical G19 to require laboratory chemical analysis of its major components to determine “is it real or Memorex.”
2) A sufficiently identical G19 will, reasonably, be assumed by Street Troops as “factory” until proven otherwise; by then a large quantity of paperwork will have been thrown into the system and distributed far and wide, requiring a second massive paperwork release to correct. I predict errors will abound, complicating court cases.
3) A shooting – where the gun is recovered at or after, because remember, without recovering the firearm used there will be no serial number, duplicated or original – in Podunk where the serial number indicates “FBI-issued in D.C.” (or a PD several states away) will be easier to resolve than a 3-D G19 that duplicates the serial on one of Podunk’s issued guns.
Serializing parts? Laser engravers just like the gun factories use are getting cheaper, so….Not to mention the difficulty bureaucratic organizations staffed by middle-IQ and somewhat sloppy employees, some of whom are at least partially dyslexic by actual diagnosis or just behavior, will make mistakes; give it a decade and no record will be accurate enough to be trusted.
Almost makes one want to salt crime scenes with 3-D guns if Biden’s wish comes to fruition.
Well… Maryland’s system indeed helped link a pair of murders to a string of robberies, one of which the thief had obtained the murder weapon.
The guy would have only been convicted of theft, but double homicide put him away for much longer.
https://www.oxygen.com/one-deadly-mistake/crime-news/jason-thomas-scott-convicted-as-maryland-mother-daughter-killer
The registry linked a string of robberies to two murders.
The question is, did the registry solve either crime? Was it the key bit of evidence that, had the investigators not had it, they would have failed to close the case?
Or was it one small, inconsequential bit of a large mass of evidence?
Canada and Maryland scrapped their registries and/or “ballistic fingerprint databases” because after over a decade and tens of millions of dollars spent amassing and maintaining the records, not one crime was definitively solved by the registry/database information. It was promised that these tools would provide crucial evidence that would guide investigations, but at best, it provided information supplemental or confirmatory to what investigators already knew from other evidence, and was unnecessary to secure convictions. IOW, they were deemed not worth the cost.
Which the pro-gun people predicted from the get-go: Lawful gun owners who comply with registry mandates are lawful enough to not commit crimes, armed or otherwise. All the registered guns found at crime scenes or in possession of criminals had been reported stolen, so the registry information was worthless.
Well, worthless except to:
a. return the gun to its rightful owner after the investigation was finished (good); or
b. in the event “assault weapon” regulations are tightened, provide authorities with a list of which homes to visit (very not good).
The Canadian registration was originally guesstimated to cost ~$100m to build. After several $Billion was spent, with no end in sight for cost growth, they threw in the towel and (supposedly) scrapped it.
I’m not advocating for the law, just that we be more precise than our opposition, “if your cause is so just, why lie?” Is a a strong argument only if we’re not called out for lying by omission.
> “The recent report says the system has produced just six “hits” — instances where crime-scene evidence matched ballistics data in the system. None of those has been used in a criminal trial, the report says.”
Surely this case is one of the six “hits” but not being used in a criminal trial doesn’t necessarily mean zero investigative value. Six hits out of hundreds of thousands of cartridge images catalogued and 2.6 million dollars spent clearly isn’t worth the squeeze, especially when the same plea bargain could have been obtained by an officer lying to the suspect saying he’d been directly linked via the weapon. Six is greater than zero, and while true these aren’t definitive evidencary links, they are of very little value.
OK, you pay for all the lazy crap-apples running and maintaining a system that does so little and get back to us?
As a crime solving tool, it’s crap. Very expensive crap.
And was never designed to do anything but screw with law abiding gun owners. And appease a bunch of nattering bitches.
Just like registering suppressors. It’s a bureaucratic make-work shit detail.